The James Webb Space Observatory has helped again make a discovery, which will force scientists to rethink the evolution of galaxies. At a distance of 11 billion light years (or at the stage of 25% of the life of the Universe), galaxies similar to ours have been discovered. This barred spiral galaxieswhere star formation is most active. Such galaxies form easily in the late universe, and seeing them so early came as a surprise.
On the left is a picture of the galaxy EGS-23205 “Hubble”, on the right – “James Webb”. Image Source: NASA/CEERS/University of Texas at Austin
According to the hypothesis, in barred spiral galaxies, in which the arms do not start from the core, but at a sufficiently large distance from it, the bars serve to pump gas to the center of the galaxy. This generates an order of magnitude, or even two orders of magnitude more star formation than in ordinary spiral galaxies. Quite far from the time of the Big Bang, this is not surprising, there is enough material for the emergence of such processes and objects, but for the early Universe this did not fit into the proposed models of evolution.
A group of astrophysicists from the University of Texas at Austin, in images taken by James Webb, were able to clearly identify two barred spiral galaxies at a distance of 10.7 (EGS-23205) and 11 (EGS-24268) billion light years from us. Previously, the image of the galaxy EGS-23205 was taken by Hubble, but the jumpers did not appear in the picture. Only the re-imaging of this galaxy obtained by James Webb made it possible to single out its bars without a doubt.
Images of six ancient barred spiral galaxies, including two even older new galaxies
“James Webb” again gave scientists food for thought, and yet these are only the first pictures. The device has not yet taken deep-field images with an exposure of several days. All this will be in the current year, which has just begun. Not even the sea awaits us, but an ocean of discoveries in astronomy.
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I think Halton Arp would be very interested to see these images if he was still with us.